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When It Works, Intel Core i5 2500K Graphics On Linux Are Fast!

Phoronix: When It Works, Intel Core i5 2500K Graphics On Linux Are Fast!

After a month of headaches for Intel and myself, there are now Sandy Bridge graphics benchmark results from the Intel Core i5 2500K under Linux to finally publish. Sandy Bridge was a tough launch for Intel in terms of the Linux coverage with the media having problems building a working driver stack and then when I finally got my hands on a CPU, I ran into an entirely different set of show-stopping problems. The developers still have not solved the biggest original issue yet, but Intel sent out a new motherboard and another CPU and it happens to "just work" nicely under Linux. When using the latest bits of their open-source Intel Linux graphics code, the performance on the Core i5 2500K is actually quite impressive compared to other open-source Linux drivers.

Comparison with current-gen Intel IGP?

Michael, would be great if you could do a comparison with current Core IronLake IGP to have a better idea what to expect when upgrading from current gen to SandyBridge.

With my Core i7 920 (IronLake), I noticed a HUGE improvement between 4x and 10x in some GL apps after upgrading to Mesa-git compared to Mesa 7.9.

Tip for mesa-git adventurers: if not building in /usr/lib, don't forget to set LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH otherwise the older DRI driver will still get loaded by the newly built libGL (which works but do not give *that* big performance increase).

The problem occured in Intelís 6-series H67/P67 chipsets that has two sets of SATA ports. One set handles four 3 Gbit/s drives and the other works with a pair of 6 Gbit/s drives. The transistor of concern is located in the PLL (phase lock loop) clock tree of the 3 Gbit/s controller. The circuit was biased at too high a voltage for the design and this resulted in an excessively high leakage current. This in turn changes the system's characteristics and causes the controller to fail. The other controller is unaffected as well as it has its own PLL.